All eyes on the IoT it seems: JAX 2014 report

A roundup of the action at JAX 2014, which took place in Mainz, Germany last week, with over 200 speakers and 2000 attendees enjoying a full week of Java, IoT, JVM, Eclipse, and methodology based talks.

Last
week, JAX 2014 once again rolled into Mainz Germany for a
comprehensive week of Java (check out what Brian Goetz had to
say about in hisKeynoteabout the language), open source, JVM,
and methodology based talks, showcases, and collaboration. As
Sebastian Meyen asserted, long gone are the days when Java
developers could hide away in their own private bubbles, impervious
to developments outside the language.

As the importance of software continues to grow,
Big Data, embedded tech, JavaScript and HTML5 have all inched their
way into ‘need-to-know’ territory. As such, JAX events are designed
to be provide an ideal opportunity for devs to hone multiple areas
of their working ‘toolkit’, and, boasting a hugely diverse array of
talks and workshops. This year was no exception, with talks
spanning everything from Spring to the IoT and agility. With over
200 speakers alone, it’s impossible to cover the entire event. Here
are just a few choice highlights:

IoT: A
cumulative total of 16 hours were devoted to all things IoT at JAX
2014, resulting in perhaps one of the most vibrant tracks of the
entire week. From an initial introduction to the subject, focusing
on IoT protocols like MQTT and CoAP, leading into a discussion
about the SmartWatch with Java SE 8, a wide range of topics,
technologies and trends found their way into the spotlight. As
Christian Götz (dc-square GmbH) informed the audience in a session
focusing on the protocol landscape, currently between 80 and 100
new devices are connected to the internet every second. Moreover,
increasingly, developers are experimenting with open hardware such
as the Arduino, the Raspberry Pi as well as other hardware
platforms such as Electric Imp and Core Spark.The IoT is slowly
coming together, and, if sheer footfall is anything to go by,
people are excited about it. Or at least they think it’s
pretty cool.

JavaFX:The dedicated JavaFX
day kicked off with an homage to the technology: “JavaFX – 10
things I love about you”. This day was all about connecting
users to the latest and most exciting implementations of the
technology, showcasing tech like the JacaFX poweredeteoBoard, as
well as Captcha Control. The next session, “JavaFX in business
applications – Does it make sense? How does it make sense?”, led by
Björn Müller (CaptainCasa),
outlined case scenarios for JavaFX use, using tech like HTML5 as a
point of comparison. Another noteworthy talk, “CDI and JavaFX, a
​​decoupled pair of Swing” (led by Sven Ruppert (Code Centric), focused on the migration of projects from Swing to JavaFX
using CDI from inside the application, demonstrating how the CDI
and the JavaFX lifecycle are combined to simultaneously use @
Inject and @ FXML.

Scala:‘Scala Day’ closed with
a keynote led by none other than the inventor of the language
himself, Martin Odersky. A veteran of the JAX conference scene,
Odersky first spoke about the then little known statically typed
language back in 2008. With Scala celebrating its tenth birthday
this year, it’s an ideal point to reflect on the story of the
language to date. Driven by warders Typesafe, today, there are
around 100,000 devs and 200,000 enthusiasts who actively code in
Scala. In spite of the criticisms the language has faced (hate for
its multi-million line code deployments, for example), Odersky
reflected that to him, Scala is a “unifier” – a language with a
lightweight syntax, which is simultaneously suitable for large
systems. In a case of positive nominative determinism, Scala really
did scale, and, as the engaged audience demonstrated, lambdas in
Java or not, a growing number of devs are continuing to discover
its charm.

Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be
publishing a special edition of JAX Magazine, featuring insights
from our JAX Innovation Awards 2014 winners, as well as
posting exclusive interviews with our speakers on the site. Watch
follow us on @JAXenterCOM to ensure you’re kept abreast of all the
latest uploads. You can also have a gander of the event photostream
here.